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There’s only one you and no one writes exactly like you. Aww,
you’re special.

And that’s why Bic wants you to add your unique handwriting to
its ambitious Universal Typeface Experiment. That and
we’re pretty sure the ballpoint pen maker also wants you reach
for its pens, not its competitors’, the next time you jot
something down between tweets and texts. (Yes, people still do
actually write from time to time. We think.)

As part a clever, crowdsourced marketing campaign/research
endeavor, Bic is collecting writing samples online from people
across the globe. The goal: To merge them into a single font.

What does the world’s first, or so Bic claims, “universal”
handwriting look like? So far, it appears somewhat surprisingly
neat and clean. No frills. No flair. Seems like participants are
putting their best finger forward.

Also odd is the fact there’s no (Bic) pen required for an effort
that “celebrates the pen we all know and use,” according to the
official press release promoting it. Your fingers
alone do the trick. Ink? What’s that?

To contribute your unique handwriting, go to Bic’s special
website for the experiment. From here,
you’ll see a URL to enter into your mobile device’s web
browser, along with a code to enter. (Of course, you’ll also
see a link to Bic’s product website.)

Once you’re in Bic’s mobile Universal Typeface Experiment site,
you’ll be prompted to finger swipe your one-of-a-kind versions of
the 26 letters of the classical Latin alphabet, all in uppercase
and strangely out of alphabetical order.

After you’ve fingered in all the letters (I did it by thumb,
though I can imagine my parents would use their index fingers),
you’ll be prompted to go back to Bic’s font project desktop
website (on your laptop or PC). From there you can share your
scrawlings anonymously or with your Facebook friends.

But before you do, it gets kind of personal. You’ll be asked if
you’re a righty or a lefty, how old you are, whether you’re male
or female, which country you live in, and, finally, what your
occupation is (from a very limited set of broad industry
choices). You can explore letter pool averages for each category.

After you jump through the requisite demographics hoops, you’ll
be treated to an animated show of your contributions, compared
against the experiment’s current average. It’s worth the effort,
mostly.

The averages are crunched via some fancy algorithm that merges
all of the input and aggregates the result into an “ ever-changing and always evolving
typeface.” Most of my sloppy excuses for graphemes are a
smidge longer, fatter and taller than the average, more
confirmation of what the nuns barked at me back in Catholic
school. I have sinfully bad penmanship.

If you want to pitch your penmanship in, you have until August to
do so, when, sometime during the month, Bic will reveal the first
official version of the Universal Typeface. Should you like what
you see, you’ll be able to download it and use it just as you
would Arial, Courier New or any other font. I’ll stick with my
old standby, Times New Roman, thank you.